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1915
This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English andComparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution toknowledge worthy of publication.
Executive Officer
The purpose of the following study is not to revive the reputation of aforgotten author or to suggest that Mrs. Haywood may yet "come into herown." For the lover of eighteenth century fashions her numerous pageshave indeed a stilted, early Georgian charm, but with the passing ofRamillies wigs and velveteen small-clothes the popularity of her novelsvanished once for all. She had her world in her time, but that world andtime disappeared with the French Revolution [a]. Now even professedstudents of the novel shrink from reading many of her seventy oddvolumes, nor can the infamous celebrity conferred by Pope's attack in"The Dunciad" save her name from oblivion. But the significance of Mrs.Haywood's contributions cannot safely be ignored. Her romances ofpalpitating passion written between 1720 and 1730 formed a necessarycomplement to Defoe's romances of adventure exactly as her DuncanCampbell pamphlets supplied the one element lacking in his. The domesticnovels of her later life foreshadowed the work of Miss Burney and MissAusten, while her career as a woman of letters helped to open a newprofession to her sex. Since even the weakest link in the development ofa literary form is important, I have endeavored to provide futurehistorians of English fiction with a compact and accurate account ofthis pioneer "lady novelist."
Hitherto the most complete summary of Mrs. Haywood's life and writingshas been Sir Sidney Lee's article in the "Dictionary of NationalBiography," which adds much information not found in the earlier noticesin Baker's "Biographia Dramatica" and Chalmers' "BiographicalDictionary." The experienced palates of Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. AustinDobson have tested the literary qualities respectively of the earlierand later aspects of her work. Professor Walter Raleigh, Dr. CharlotteE. Morgan, and Professor Saintsbury have briefly estimated theimportance of her share in the change from romance to novel.
Perhaps the main reason for the inadequacy of these notices lies in thefact that no one library contains anything like a complete collection ofMrs. Haywood's innumerable books. In pursuit of odd items I haveransacked the British Museum, the Bodleian, and several minor literarymuseums in England, and in America the libraries of Columbia, Harvard,Yale, and Brown Universities, the Peabody Institute, and the Universityof Chicago. The search has enabled me to correct many inaccuracies inMiss Morgan's tentative list of prose fiction and even to supplement Mr.Esdaile's admirable "List of English Tales and Prose Romances printedbefore 1740," which mentions only works now extant in British libraries.
In the Bibliography I have adopted an alphabetical arrangement as mostconvenient for ready reference. Under the various editions of each bookI have referred to libraries, English or American, where copies are tobe found. Or when no copy was to be had, I have referred toadvertisements, either in the newspapers of the Burney Collection, inthe "Gentlema